build: Add an autogen script

This conforms to general expectations, and makes having to infer what
is needed to prepare the source tree more easily discoverable.

4 files changed, 8 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/README b/README
index 348f8e700..d255efb32 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ some required software needs to be installed:
 After installing the needed software, and running the following command on
 the git tree:
 
-  $ autoreconf -f -i
+  $ ./autogen
 
 the source should be roughly equivalent to the distributed tar source.
 
diff --git a/autogen b/autogen
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..99ca3fe41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/autogen
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+set -e
+
+autoreconf -f -i
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 372dcdcde..88907cf8f 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -91,6 +91,7 @@ dpkg (1.19.1) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
     - Enable clang -Wdocumentation warning if available.
     - Enable gcc-7 -Wregister warning if available.
     - Add CPAN distribution machinery for the perl modules. Closes: #821177
+    - Add an autogen script to help people bootstrap the project.
   * Packaging:
     - Install update-alternatives policykit-1 file.
     - Add Breaks to libdpkg-perl against pkg-kde-tools (<< 0.15.28~), as
diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index d5e13c67f..6099c5c10 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ D := $(CURDIR)/debian/tmp
 configure:
 	dh_testdir
 
-	autoreconf -v -i
+	./autogen
 
 # Configure the build tree
 build-tree/config.status: configure